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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Troodon, post: 209441, member: 4626&quot;]Good point, but that&#039;s a boycott by several <i>countries</i>, not just an individual or a handful of individuals.&nbsp; The effectiveness of a boycott is directly proportional to the scale of participation, and it has to be among people who would have bought the products in question in the absense of the boycott (one example of an ineffective boycott that didn&#039;t realize that second part is when the Catholic Church considered calling for a boycott of the Da Vinci Code, not realizing the obvious fact that most Catholics would probably not have seen the movie anyway...)</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyway, boycotts can be effective, but it has to be of a large enough scale to actually deny the target a signficant amount of income the target can&#039;t easily replace from another source.&nbsp; Boycotts are not effective if:</p><p><br /></p><p>The act is purely symbolic, as the target is not really deprived of anything (for example, when the US declared a cessation of trade with North Korea, when they already didn&#039;t trade with them anyway; or refusing to use $20 bills that has no real effect on the Federal Reserve)</p><p><br /></p><p>The income is easily replaced from another source because the commodity is nearly perfectly fungible (for example, boycotting certain gas stations or oil complanies that can easily sell the product elsewhere if it isn&#039;t purchased here)</p><p><br /></p><p>It is not a product or service the boycotters would have likely consumed anyway (for example, saying you&#039;re boycotting Mexican tourism to protest immigration policies, if you had no plans to travel to Mexico anyway; and again the Catholic Church advsing Catholics not to go see the Da Vinci Code, which most of them weren&#039;t likely to anyway)</p><p><br /></p><p>It is not large enough scale to have a significant impact against the target (already provided a good example of that.&nbsp; The reason why the boycott agains the Soviet Union&#039;s Olympic coins did work was because it was on a very large scale)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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